Roguelike Sword of the Stars: The Pit - roguelike in Sword of the Stars universe

[Renegen]

Played the demo, meh. Went back to TOME4.

I would classify it as really old school roguelike, all about resource management than anything else.

I would qualify Dredmor as better than this, much better... and at half the price. The gameplay of Dredmor feels unique, too different and the shitty music doesn't help. It's possibly a bad thing for the quick paced roguelike fan.

 

[Deakul]

Targeting with the arrow keys seems like a completely retarded design choice, wonder what they were thinking with that?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Nothing like dying to a (it seems very experienced) vortex you thought you could shrug off

Why you thought you could casually shrug off vortices is what you should analyze.

Yeah yeah, usual bullshit about how I should be spendng 5 minutes reading wikis on the exact amount of damage everything does before I fight, no matter how strong or resistant my character may be or how utterly weak and trivial the enemy. I can only assume a 'good' ADOM player finishes one game every 30 years. Maybe in the enxt release version you can request that a 30 page long ToS gets put in with a 3 letter password in size 2 font hidden within, and a new secret boss be added that spawns and hits you for 9999999999999 damage if you'd didn't rename a dwarf with the password before reaching level 19. I'm sure that won't be obnoxious as fuck. In fact, he should add a dozen such events. Makes for really skill oriented gameplay when totally unforseeable shit happens every 3 seconds unless you're reading a walkthrough or memorized enough data to fill an encyclopedia.

 

[felipepepe]

Targeting with the arrow keys seems like a completely retarded design choice, wonder what they were thinking with that?

I bet on many playtesters missifiring their weapons...

 

[sea]

The aiming system is counter-intuitive but not hard. You can auto-attack the nearest enemy by just pressing F, which works totally fine and is acceptable in 90% of circumstances. Keyboard aiming (and having to hold down Ctrl) is clunky and it really should have been done with the mouse, but it only takes one or two tries to figure it out.

 

[anus_pounder]

Died after a med-bay actually turned out to an interrogation bay. Took me down from 50% health to 0%.

Here we go again.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

http://justpressstart.net/episode-122-kerberos-productions-martin-cirulis-and-chris-stewart-stop-by/

2 hour podcast with Kerberos folks. Lots of just general discussion, biggest the Pit news is an expansion is coming this June that'll add a psionics class and a tarka ranger class.

PS: This game is good. Enjoying it more than Dredmor. Dredmor drags ass compared to basically any other roguelike, the Pit doesn't. The combat isn't as sharp as DoomRL, but the extra layer of item scrounging and skill management sets it apart. Definitely interested in expansions.

 

[AngryDude]

Does not work on my win xp

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Does not work on my win xp

It's time. It's time for you to upgrade to Windows 8. The future is now. Join us.

(also sots the pit says minimum is win xp so your os shouldn't be what's holding you back)

 

[AngryDude]

So what is it? I got some runtime error.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I thought the game was pretty ok until I got tho the last floor. Huge fucking level with tons of rooms chock full of enemies, often enemies that hadn't shown up on any of the previous 29 floors. I got through maybe 4 or 5 (out of like 20) rooms before I ran out of every type of ammo and health kit I had (which had been enough to have re-killed everything I'd encountered on all the previous floors combined.) Given the choice between backtracking through 30 floors scrounging for more ammo or just giving up, I dropped the game and never tried it again.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

The fuck should I know!?

 

[AngryDude]

The fuck should I know!?

You don't know ?!

 

[Zdzisiu]

Yeah, the last floor is quite bullshit, just room after a room full of enemies. It is all about bleeding you dry of resources like ammo and healt packs than any tactics. What is more, there is not that many containers on that floor that could at least give you a chance of getting some additional supplies. And I dont know if that was just my bad luck but I got more than one room in which all but one container turned out to be an adaptoid, like 9 or 10 of them.

The game up to the last floor is cool, you discover new recipies, find new equipement, fight new monsters etc, and on the last floor you just feel terribly dissapointed.

 

[Gozma]

What is with the fucking progress bars on shit constantly

Roguelike time is not like a square's time. You don't watch progress bars fill up.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

What is with the fucking progress bars on shit constantly

Roguelike time is not like a square's time. You don't watch progress bars fill up.

Progress bars are because some actions take more than a single turn to perform. Each "Chunk" that fills in on the progress bar is a turn passing in the game, which matters if you're trying to use a medbay while a multi-headed dick is slapping ass and thigh, or you start trying to pick the lock on a chest as a monster moves into view. And reloading takes time depending on the weapon. The standard "Pistol" pistol is a revolver and takes two turns to reload, the auto-pistol which uses a magazine takes one, and a rifle might take 3 or 4.

Progress bars are a non-issue.

 

[Gozma]

You think there are not multiturn actions in other roguelikes holmes? You think those have progress bars that take five seconds?? You think this is a fuckign game??

YOu.... you don't know shit, you motherfucker,,, fuck

For real though those are probably there because this game has animations, so if a monster walks in you have to be able to see it moseying between tiles, therefore a progress bar to slow the game down.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You guys who think the last level is bullshit should probably mention this on the forums, the game is still new and is receiving updates to fix some obvious problems.

6 Apr 2013 @ 2:01am​

v.1.0.4.0​

Will be going live shortly...

Critical fixes:
- Fixed rare keyboard crash a couple players reported.

Other fixes:
- Fixed (finally) bug: Burst-fire sometimes misfiring when poisoned/choked.
- Fixed bug: Level up sound playing when earning first experience in new game.
- Fixed attack animations holding last frame while shot travels to target.
- Fixed bug: Charge Hub infinite XP exploit.
- Fixed bug: Selection color in recipe list for crafting.
- Fixed bug: Enemies occupying the same square.
- Fixed visual issues with attack animations.
- Fixed bug: Interacting with devices while blind causing Outline to disappear.
- Fixed bug: Skill/Stat modifiers not showing descriptions when loading save game.
- Fixed bug: Extra ammo/items being discarded when picking up loot with full inventory.

Additions and changes:
- Enviromentally sealed armors now protect against gas attacks.
- Added notification if player equips a weapon they don't meet the requirements for.
- Added HUD toggle.
- Quantum Scan Helmet now reveals props.
- Adjusted monster variety on Floor 30 on Hard/Insane difficulty.
- Added dragging item onto another of the same size to swap positions in inventory.
- Added more info to SotsDex entries for weapons/armor/characters.
- Added moves remaining to HUD.
- Added grouping similar items when auto-sorting inventory.
- Added log entries in SotSDex for experience earned.
- Added context menu for shortcut items in Inventory.
- Auto-targeting will track last target.
- Skills now show stat contribution.
- Biomods/Keys grouped together in SotsDex, including post-identification.
- Energy Drink reduced speed increase from 2 to 1
- Changed recipe failure dialog colors. Green for success, yellow for valid but failed recipe, red for invalid recipe.
- New recipes and monsters.​

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

For real though those are probably there because this game has animations, so if a monster walks in you have to be able to see it moseying between tiles, therefore a progress bar to slow the game down.

Yep, exactly that. I just don't think it slows the game down to an appreciable degree. Whereas Dredmor moves at a glacial pace for a roguelike even with the patched-in faster game mode. Plus I wanna say you can slap your keyboard to cancel an action in-progress if you see a monster, but now that I think about it I'm not sure that's even true. Pretty sure I tried that at one point and it didn't work. Action only gets canceled if you take damage.

Also gotta say I really like how your movement speed speeds up/slows down if there are monsters near. So if you've cleared an area out you can run around at warp speed, but once you start nearing monsters it gets more obviously turn based with brief pauses as enemies move. Biggest complaint with the game is I wish it had more variety. Not strictly speaking enemies and items since that can throw things out of whack, but I'm talking more dungeon variety. Different room types, different floor layouts, maybe the occasional side-dungeon like the gnome mines in Nethack which have different dangers and different rewards. Considering they didn't get their full funding from their Indiegogo campaign it's still a sharp little game though.

 

[Gozma]

In more OG Roguelikes you don't get any information updates about the world between your turns, so inter-turn time can be skipped. So if you do something that takes a lot of turns (say eating a dragon corpse in Nethack IIRC) it passes instantly in player terms, unless you are interrupted. Or the other way, a really fast monster can attack you on several of its turns in between each turn you get, and all you see of it is in the message stack.

If you get used to that kinda game quickness then 4-5 second delays that get repeated hundreds of times per game start driving you nuts.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Welp. Just beat this on easy (Hey, I was getting crafting recipes! (The crafting stuff should either be randomized or not let you craft until you find the recipes, and then the game should be balanced in such a way the recipes drop fairly regularly and/or don't require many components, but this is another rant)) and the final verdict is... Game blows it once you start getting deeper. The dungeon never really changes, it's basically always the same "Boxes and tubes" you see on dungeon level 1. You see the same enemies throughout the game which wouldn't be a big deal, except you see them in addition to new enemies. The deeper you go the more enemies you find. Damned Registration's complaint about the last floor is definitely true, but even leading up TO that point they throw way, WAY more enemies at you than they should. The combat system in the Pit isn't up to, say, DoomRL snuff. It can't lean on it so heavily. On top of that there are a lot of really durable enemies that'll burn up time and ammo to whittle down (The large proteans are really guilty of this. Big blob shoots down to two medium blobs which shoot down to 4 little blobs) which means a hell of a lot of time wasted sitting in combat. Nethack's combat might be relatively simple but it generally doesn't turn into such a slog.

Hopefully they'll work on it some, but I honestly don't expect they'll fix that. It'd be like trying to make Dredmor move faster than molasses (Which they gave a noble effort but didn't really work). Why are pay to play roguelikes uniformly worse than free ones? They're not entirely bad games or anything, but compared to freebies they're just not as good.

 

[Behelit]

Why are pay to play roguelikes uniformly worse than free ones? They're not entirely bad games or anything, but compared to freebies they're just not as good.

The only rougelikes I've played is SOTS: The Pit and FTL (both of which I enjoyed immensely). What freebies do you recommend?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Check out this thread.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-codex-of-roguelikes.71097/

I'd suggest TomE4 or Stone Soup to start with.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Why are pay to play roguelikes uniformly worse than free ones? They're not entirely bad games or anything, but compared to freebies they're just not as good.

The only rougelikes I've played is SOTS: The Pit and FTL (both of which I enjoyed immensely). What freebies do you recommend?

http://doom.chaosforge.org/ <- Good beginner roguelike. Easy to learn the basics of (Though I recommend using the wiki for almost all roguelikes) but still deep. Good combat system. Tileset, music, and positional sound. Probably least intimidating "Real" roguelike.

http://roguesurvivor.blogspot.com/ <- Good zombie apocalypse roguelike. Still has graphics instead of ASCI. Unlike DoomRL and most other roguelikes there isn't really a win condition in Rogue Survivor, you just get a sandbox city full of zombie apocalypse and play how you want.

http://www.nethack.org/ <- The biggun. It does TECHNICALLY have a tileset mode (I don't really recommend it) but it's absolutely ridiculously hard. Especially if you try to avoid spoilers. I've read some folks say they don't care for Nethack, but it's one of my standbys and is by far the deepest roguelike I've played.

Those are probably my 3 favorites, roughly in order of difficulty. You should be able to pick up the basics of DoomRL in short order if you've played the Pit, and Rogue Survivor is more about learning how the sandbox works than learning obscure gameplay mechanics or anything. Nethack's great if you want a challenge/a game you keep around for years and occasionally bring out and gnaw on for a while. Despite playing it off and on for years I've never ascended a character (Beaten the game).

 

[Gozma]

Nethack is like a five year game if you avoid spoilers, and it's really not a very rewarding type of difficulty (take notes). However you will have 2-3 characters that die in a hilarious or spectacular enough way that you will remember them for all time so I can't dis-recommend it

Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is a Nethack-type roguelike that is straightforward enough that you can beat it without spoilers in a month or three of playing it pretty hard and it has as a good a UI and overall presentation as exists for the genre

TOME4 is for people that like builds